KASEKI POP 2023〜SUMMER TIME〜 / TOKYO POP by KASEKI CIDER

8.19 sat – 9.3 sun 2023

WATOWA GALLERY is pleased to announce a solo show KASEKI POP 2023〜SUMMER TIME by Koseki Cider and group exhibition OKYO POP by KASEKI CIDER

STATEMENT

THE POP ART OF KASEKI CIDER

THE POP ART OF KASEKI CIDER —Strain your ears to these works and listen to the sound of this age—

Kaseki cider is a representative hip-hop artist of Japan who appears as well as a multifaceted personality in various genres such as manga, literary practices, or contemporary art. His works feature taut compositions and a translucent and simple tone, with a pleasantness as if listening to rhythmical city pop music.

In his notable series of masterpieces, the artist repainted well-known classic works such as the Mona Lisa, Sunflowers by Van Gogh, Water Lilies by Monet, and others in his unique style of minimality and adorableness. “A sampling of a masterpiece” is what the artist calls this practice. Sampling in hip-hop music where parts of existing sound recordings are borrowed and reconstructed has something similar to the expression method of borrowing masterpieces as a symbol. What lies there are respect, friendliness, and affection towards the masterpieces, and a strong empathy that wishes to share such feelings with others. The need to share one’s likes with their friends, or to seek lightness, brightness, or cuteness as if to stand against this troublesome reality–all these moods in the age today match the atmosphere around kaseki cider’s work so amazingly. If we were to consider contemporary art something that requires to equip intelligence, or else unreachable beyond the walls of the concepts, the art of this artist is a very friendly and comfortable world to anyone. This style of generosity that repels no one is related to a sense of happiness that one would want to admire forever.

Yet, his quality lies not only in that popness or familiarity. Looking closely at his works which seem to have a CG-like smoothness and accuracy, you can perceive distortions of hand-drawn lines or the traces of layered colors, which proves well that he is a genuine painter. This humanistic fluctuation of hand-drawn works let some vitality to the motives and a chronology to the works. This accumulation of massive information is as well a sort of complication, though the artist is fully aware that “humans are intrigued by this density of information.”

Before starting his career as a musician, kaseki cider used to produce game characters and backgrounds taking charge of the graphics at a gaming company. One of his works depicts a Pac-Man in the eyes of the Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer; a sense of humor that can be understood through his career as a video game developer. His experiences in the dawning of the game graphics industry which let him use a limited number of colors taught him well the fineness of hand drawings and the influence on humans given by the amount of information presented on a screen. The desire to keep staring at a screen for a long time is linked with the sensation of how one perceives something interesting. That subtle equilibrium of simplicity and complexity is the charm of kaseki cider’s works which keeps fascinating the heart of the spectators.

Miwa Kutsuna

Artists

Kaseki Cider, Minetaro Mochizuki, Yutanpo Sirone